Minnesota Patch gets huge traffic with Arianna’s help

TBD.com | Gigom.com | Storify.comChris Steller, editor of the Patch site in Fridley, Minn., sent Arianna Huffington an email asking if she’d blog for his site. She responded — positively — in eleven minutes. “I couldn’t refuse,” Huffington tells Erik Wemple. “It’s that kind of go-getter motivation that makes our Patch editors so good at their jobs.” Her post welcoming new bloggers to Patch was picked up by 250 Patches around the country. || Mathew Ingram: Can Patch become the Huffington Post of local news? || David Rotenstein: Brouhaha over livestock story makes you wonder: is Patch is too hyperlocal.

So what’s the big deal? Huffington, who is handsomely paid and who, as part of her duties, is invested in generating positive buzz for the blog-for-free model, most likely had one of her many assistants provide a thinly vieled puff piece, on a one-off bais, to one of the sites she’s responsible for. What does this prove? Nothing. Except that she knows how to squeeze spin out of anything. She’s not a writer trading work for no pay; she’s a skilled PR maven exploiting an opportunity to get her company and its distorted *business model* more clicks.